As the Chief of this wonderful department, I believe we have some of the most dedicated Firefighters in the state. OK, I may be biased but I am extremely proud of the dedication and accomplishments of the IGH FF! Several of our firefighters have received statewide recognition for their service to this community, service to other groups and organizations, as well as a life-saving rescue.

Our Firefighters are very active, running over 1300 calls out of only two stations, which keeps everyone busy. Because calls were climbing, in January 2016, we switched from a completely paged out fire department to a 3 person staffed Duty Crew response model. Our volunteer paid-on-call firefighters sign up to work 4 or 8 hour shifts several times a month. While firefighters are still paged out for larger and simultaneous calls, the duty crew has been a very positive addition to our department.

For many years, our newer firefighters have had two very positive role models – Jeff Davis and Bill Groth – who are both still active. Jeff Davis has been responding for 44 years! Jeff attends 100% of all ongoing training every year and typically holds one of the highest percentages of response to paged emergency calls. With that kind of dedication, Jeff has responded to more than 10,000 emergency calls in his volunteer career. Bill Groth seems like a youngster when compared to Jeff, but has 30 years on our fire department. Not only has Bill been attending 100% of the ongoing training, he broke the record a couple years ago for most calls responded to in a year by any volunteer – 755 calls out of 1229!

As you can see, the dedication of the Inver Grove Heights Firefighters is second to none and I am extremely proud to be their Fire Chief!